LSBU students occupy!

At 11.15am today, students from the ‘Defend LSBU! Defend our Education’ group occupied the Lanuage Centre at London South Bank University. This was in response to continued attacks and cuts by the university management which has seen the closure of the language centre, scrapping of the emergency loan system, over 140 job losses and the intimidation of students by university security.

Previously, students and staff on campus collected over 1100 signatures to prevent the closure of the Language Centre – a petition which has been completely ignored by university management. Last week, students were kicked off university premises as security smashed up an anti-cuts meeting stating that we are no longer allowed to “organise anti-cuts campaigns on campus”.

Over the last couple of weeks students up and down the country have occupied their campuses in response to vicious cuts by the coalition government. We expect to see many more occupations over the next few days. Defend LSBU! Defend our Education! stands in solidarity with all students who are fighting education cuts, and we encourage other schools, colleges and universities to follow our example and occupy.

We will be releasing a list of demands to the university shortly. We will continue this occupation until our demands are met, and the university guarantees to respect our rights as students.